Recovery care program assists wounded, ill or injured Airmen

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Chris Powell
  • Defense Media Activity
FORT MEADE, Md. (AFNS) --  When an Airman becomes seriously wounded, ill or injured, the little things have a tendency to fall through the cracks as they focus on recovery and rehabilitation. These little things, like paying the bills for instance, have the potential to turn into major problems for Airmen and their families if they're left unresolved.

That's when Air Force Recovery Care coordinators step in. They find service members who are wounded during war, injured in an accident or diagnosed with a serious illness and provide them with nonmedical support throughout their recovery, rehabilitation and re-integration stages. That help includes transportation, housing, finances, legal assistance and even child care.

"We're not here to fill the role of a commander or first sergeant; they still have a very unique role in what they're doing," said Stephen Page, the Air Force Recovery Care program manager. "I spent 11 years as a first sergeant and had some of the toughest squadrons you could ever throw at a human being, and I'm here to tell you I would kill (to get) an RCC on my base to help me get my Airmen to where they need to be."

When a coordinator finds an Airman who wants their assistance, the RCC completes a comprehensive recovery plan with the service member to establish goals and identify nonmedical areas where help is needed. "Even if it's something as simple as them needing glasses or if they're trying to get nonmedical attendant orders, we do all that for them," said Donald Damron, an RCC at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

For Senior Airman Mike Malarsie, who was blinded by a roadside bomb in 2010 while deployed to Afghanistan, that meant Damron had to assist in finding him and his family base housing at Lackland AFB that was compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"Mike is a perfect example of what our program does. He has had four RCCs from the time he came out of the theater and was at (Walter Reed National Military Medical Center)," Damron said. "From there, he went to the Palo Alto Rehabilitation Center in California, then to New Mexico and now he's stationed here in San Antonio. (The recovery care coordinators) took him all the way from the recovery stage, through the rehabilitation stage and now I have him (during his) reintegration stage. We do a smooth hand off and make sure that nothing's dropped, the wheel's not reinvented every time, and we're there."

Malarsie's wife, Jesse, said she is pleased with the assistance the coordinators have provided her husband and family. "I have been really impressed. They have been there through everything," she said.

The majority of the coordinators are former first sergeants, command chiefs or colonels, Damron said. The experience the RCCs gained during their time in the Air Force enables them to provide better service to Airmen because they understand how the system works.

"As a former first sergeant, I'm used to dealing with financial issues, marital issues, substance abuse issues, and I think a lot of that prepared me for the job I do today," Damron said. "We network with support agencies, agencies within the Department of Defense and agencies within the local communities, so we can cut through a lot of the bureaucracy for the military member."

The Air Force RCC program began in November 2008 when the National Defense Authorization Act tasked each service to establish a program to assist wounded, ill or injured service members. Page was the first person hired to establish and run the program.

"We've learned a lot from the Marine Corps, but we built this program by taking the best practices from our sister services," he said. "We took those parts and pieces and gelled them into one to get where we're at today."

Currently, there are 33 RCCs in the program located throughout the continental U.S. as well as one in Hawaii and Landstuhl, Germany, serving more than 1,100 wounded, ill or injured Airmen, Damron said. They're strategically stationed at hospitals and other locations where high volume of wounded, ill or injured Airmen are being treated.

"Through the RCC at Landstuhl, I'm able to get a two to three day heads up that I have a service member coming into my region, and that helps me go ahead and lay some ground work and to start contacting the family member in getting hotel rooms or plane tickets in order," Damron said. "I take on all these issues for the family so they can concentrate on getting better."

Damron said throughout his 28-year career, he's seen many programs that are poorly designed an inefficient, and he knows the recovery care program doesn't have those problems.

"The RCC program is well thought out, very effective in what it does, and I wouldn't be a part of it if it wasn't," Damron said. "I see people from the day they're in the intensive care unit, the burn ward or maybe they have a traumatic brain injury and to see that person 18 months later get up and walk out of the hospital, there's no words to describe it. We're where the boots hit the ground, and we see the results of our efforts."